Notable: Crewdson Goes Black and White!

Known for his grand cinematic (and expensive) posed color tableaux, Gregory Crewdson has set his approach on its head by taking a cinema studio in Italy and shooting it in Black and White for his book, Sanctuary.

These new images are black and white, lit mostly with available light, and empty of human subjects. Made over the course of a month in summer 2009 on the back lot of the historic Cinecittà movie studio in Rome, they show film sets in various states of disrepair and decay-entire worlds built for the screen, then abandoned until the next production crew comes to remake the space.

The decision to shoot in black and white was based on a desire to reference photographers like Atget, and also because, paradoxically, the sets felt “more real” in black and white. “In color they feel more artificial,” Crewdson says. “There’s also something almost immediately elegiac about black and white.”

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